A Glorious Tour of Microsoft, Redmond, and Seattle

Today’s entry is our second in the series from our 2009 summer interns. See the previous entry to find more info on the Microsoft intern program — Cherie

After living most of my life in the state of Michigan, I got the opportunity to move to Redmond, WA for twelve weeks of the summer, work for Microsoft, and explore the Seattle area. During my time here I interned as a Program Manager, or PM, on Microsoft Publisher. Going into the internship I knew that Microsoft was not paying me just to get coffee for the boss and drink pops from the drink cooler, but I didn’t expect to be working on features that are very valuable to the product. This summer I was given the opportunity to make improvements to the “Save as PDF or XPS” experience, an experience that I have personally used numerous times in Word and Publisher 2007 to turn in papers and print publications on the University printers.

It was exciting at times and intimidating at others to know that my feature space is an area that has such an impact on most of Office software applications. But, I have to say the coolest thing about being a PM is watching the feature grow from an single idea to bringing it to life with the help of a team that included a tester, a developer and myself. I actually got the opportunity to design, spec, and implement two features that may find themselves in Office 2010, as well as make recommendations for the next version of Publisher. And I got to do this with a great group of people giving me help and support along the way.

Nicole Dolan

About the contributor: Nicole is a senior at the University of Michigan. Her home town is Lake Onion, Michigan.